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Friday, June 1, 2012

Authors Strive To Live A Life Of Opposites

I
was reading a book of opposites to my four-year-old daughter recently and she
asked: “What are opposites?” I thought it would be the easiest thing to teach,
but it wasn’t. She did not see small and large or short and tall as things on
other ends of a spectrum. She just saw them as different from one another.

A
little more explaining got her to grasp the concept, but it made me think about
all the things that are in the middle of the opposites – the average, the
normal, the mediocre. We tend to ignore those things and seek out only the ones
on the edge, the amazingly good and bad, high and low, the beautiful and ugly.
Why?

Truth
is, most opposites pose problems of practicality. How would you like to be a
midget or a 1,000-pound person? There is a burden attached to living in the
extremes, yet we pursue the extremes every day. It is almost as if we go to
where we have our best chance to be an opposite. Where some try to win 10 games
in a row, others are more comfortable in losing 10 straight. Where some focus
on making a lot of money, another focuses on creating the world’s largest
collection of soda cans. We are comfortable, even if we deny it, with being
known for having the most or the least, for being the best or the worst. We
just want a tag put on us, to give us definition.

Many
books praise the extremes. We have the Guinness
Book of World Records and other fact books tell us where things rate.

Many
sports and finance books like to talk statistics and compare the greatest and
worst performances. Other books like to highlight an extreme situation – the
fastest man, the richest person, the dumbest criminals, the sexiest woman, the
smartest person, the biggest building, etc.

Fiction
does it as well. The basis of many books is to explore some amazing talent,
such as a superhero (Superman) or
superior athlete (The Natural). We
crave to live the life of someone that is known for something – whether the
hero or the villain.

Yet,
by definition, the vast majority are ordinary in most ways, most of the time.
Why don’t we settle for our place in society instead of always striving to be
something else? It is hard to accept that we won’t be famous, infamous, or
extremely great or even horribly bad for a moment. We desperately want our 15
minutes of fame but we cannot even conjure 15 seconds.

Authors
know this state of mind well. Even the humble ones want their book to be read,
to be valued, to be talked about. They want to be praised and appreciated. They
want the media to legitimize their work with critical praise. They want to earn
riches from what they enjoy doing. They want to be immortalized, to live the
legacy they hope to achieve. Some – but very few – will achieve what they are
looking for.

The
rest will be labeled “mediocre” at best, something that has no opposite.

Interview With Fiction Author Frances Brody

What
type of books do you write?I
write mystery stories, in the classic crime tradition, set in 1920s Yorkshire.
My heroine is private detective, Kate Shackleton, First World War widow turned
sleuth. Kate began her first investigations through trying to discover what
happened to her husband. She had received a wartime telegram telling her that
Gerald was missing in action. Kate does not accept that missing means dead. As
late as 1922, when the stories begin, she has not given up hope that Gerald may
return. Perhaps he has lost his memory, or stayed in France. Her search leads
her into helping other women.

Kate Shackleton has been variously
described as ‘a young Miss Marple’ (my editor); ‘who I envision Nancy Drew
growing up to be’ (reader in Florida) and ‘a splendid heroine’ (fellow crime
author). I love writing about Kate. She is thoroughly modern, drives a snazzy
car, and has a sharp, wry take on the world.

What
is your latest or upcoming book about?The
answer to this question is different for the US and Canada than for the UK. The
fourth Kate Shackleton mystery will be published in London in September, 2012.
In the US and Canada, the first book in the series, Dying in the Wool was published in February 2012, and the second, A Medal for Murder, will follow in
February, 2013.

Dying
in the Wool sees Kate turning ‘professional.’ A chum from her wartime days
in the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) engages her to look into the
disappearance of her father.

Tabitha’s millionaire mill-owner
father went missing in 1917. The search for him at the time drew a blank. Soon,
Tabitha will marry. She hopes Kate will find her father in time for him to walk
her down the aisle.

The setting is a Yorkshire village,
picturesque but with a working woolen mill at its heart. These were the days
when there were more Rolls-Royces in the ‘Wool City’ of Bradford than in
London. Has Tabitha’s father run off with his mistress, taking his ill-gotten
gains from wartime profiteering, or has something more sinister occurred? The
villagers don’t want to talk. There is a lot to keep quiet about. But Kate
loves a puzzle and is not easily discouraged.

What
inspired you to write it?Like
most writers, I have a kind of antenna that alerts me to a new story. Rush at
an idea, it may never come to life. Wait too long, it may float away. I was in
that state of knowing something would happen soon, and wondering what that
something might be.

On a Monday morning, a work colleague
told me that she had seen a medium on daytime television. A woman in the
audience put a question: Why didn’t my father come back to us? The medium told
her that he was prevented from returning. This was an insignificant anecdote,
but it gave me a way into the story. Here was a mystery. Someone had to solve
it.

Kate Shackleton, sleuth
extraordinaire, leapt from the family album. We have photographs going back to
the beginning of the last century. There is a striking photograph of a family
friend. She is also an enigma, because I know so little about her. That meant I
could create Kate with this image in mind, but the personality, the humor, the
insights, are all Kate’s own.

What
did you do before you became an author?I’ve
always written. When I left school, at sixteen, I worked as a shorthand typist,
with an evening job as a cinema usherette. When I was old enough (eighteen) I
took an evening job as a barmaid and saved for a typewriter.

Having office skills allowed me to
travel. I worked in Washington, D.C., Manhattan, and Chicago. On returning to
the UK, I was accepted for a place at Ruskin College, Oxford, and went on to
York University. After that, I taught in Further Education full-time for five
years, and then lots of part-time work in Higher Education, Adult Education and
home tutoring.

My stories and scripts were accepted
by the BBC and various magazines. I wrote for touring theatre companies, and
BBC Schools History and Drama programs. My first saga (written as Frances
McNeil) won the HarperCollins Elizabeth Elgin Award for the most regionally
evocative saga of the millennium.

How does it feel to be a published
author?It feels wonderful to have
created the Kate Shackleton series and to have reader friends who are waiting
for the next book. I’m always making plans for Kate, and admit to spending more
time thinking about her life than my own.

I love the covers for the series,
drawn by artist Helen Chapman, and am fortunate to have a good editor who likes
Kate as much as I do.

Belonging to the Crime Writers’
Association has led me to taking part in all sorts of events, such as the
Bristol CrimeFest. There is now a Crime Readers’ section of the CWA, and that’s
great because without readers, we’d all be stymied!

I don’t take any of this for granted.
It’s a very uncertain world. But of course that’s true for most people, not
just authors.

Any
advice for struggling writers?Take heart! Writing
is a craft you can teach yourself by doing.

Time
can be a difficulty when a person is juggling family commitments and paid
employment. In my first year of full-time teaching, I carried around a little
note in my wallet, a timetable of what hours I would snatch for writing:
sixteen and three quarter hours. The three quarters shows how obsessed I was.
Make a note of what hours can be yours for writing, no matter how few, and
stick to it.

If
you get stuck in the slough of despond, read Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande, published in the thirties,
but still spot-on. She gives helpful exercises designed to keep the writing
flowing.

Separate
the writer in you from the critic

Once you have something you think is
worth showing, put it on one side and look at it again after a period of
gestation. Perhaps read it aloud. Be picky, because agents and editors will be.
But also, try to be your own helpful friend and be constructive about how the
manuscript should be revised.

Genre If you are writing in a genre, read recently
published books to work out what length they are and who is reading them.

Look
around you for opportunities. There’s a lot of satisfaction to be had
from writing/editing books that are not in the mainstream.

Where
do you see book publishing heading?If
I had even a whiff of a clever answer, I’d be advising CEOs and earning a
helluva lot more than I am now! My wish would be for publishers to think not
only of the books they are publishing today, but to be loyal to their past
lists, work closely with libraries, and see our industry in a more holistic
way.

Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this
blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com.
He feels more important when discussed in the third-person.

1 comment:

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About Me

Brian Feinblum, the creator and author of BookMarketingBuzzBlog, is the chief marketing officer for the nation's largest book promotions firm, Media Connect (www.Media-Connect.com), formerly Planned Television Arts, and has been involved in book publicity and marketing since 1989. He has served several book publishing companies as a publicist, book editor, and acquisitions editor. Brian, who earned a BA in English from Brooklyn College, became a published author in 1995 when he penned The Florida Homeowner, Condo and Co-Op Handbook. He resides in Westchester, New York with his wife, two young children, and an English Bulldog.